Too Many Hours Far, far, far too many hours in front of a computer today, not a bit of it writing. I got up and moved around regularly and rested my eyes, but didn’t even have time for a nap. So no writing tonight. Back at it tomorrow and back at Heinlein’s Rules as well. —— Anthology Workshop Notice Those in the anthology workshop, ten of you missed the first assignment. Second assignment is now posted. ——- THE DAY Got up early again, dealt with some business issues I didn’t want to have to ever deal with, then managed to get to the store and to WMG Publishing to…

Return on Assets A number of very nice people who are deep into accounting and MBA reminded me today in letters and a couple of posts, that I was wrong as to what “Return on Investment” actually is. Well, sort of, and I forgot to do as I often do here to say, “I am talking in general to get the idea across to those without business and accounting experience. What I was actually talking about (realizing publishing and copyright is a very unique business in some ways) was Return on Assets, with your stories being assets. For those of you who don’t know what Return on Assets is, here…

Figuring Writing Investment Return The topic tonight comes from a couple people asking how a writer could figure ROI (Return on Investment) on their writing without following the numbers. More on that below. —— THE DAY Slept late, raining solidly here today. Nasty kind of rain, not our normal dump and then the sun comes out. I did errands, snail mail, bank, grocery store, other things, then got to WMG offices around 5 p.m. Worked there until 6:30 on Smith’s Monthly, then home to cook dinner, then back to WMG to work on Smith’s Monthly and do some work on the new store. Then home to do workshop assignments and…

What Numbers You Need To Know A couple nights ago I did a blog about results addiction, the career-killing problem of watching numbers too much and other aspects of that addiction. I got a number of questions about what numbers are needed in an indie career, so below I’ll give you my opinion on a way to be a good business person without being addicted to numbers and taking those numbers into your writing. —— The New Workshops I was not clear on one thing last night about the workshops. The new workshop Plotting with Depth is now on the schedule through March. The older workshop we are bringing back,…

PLOTTING WITH DEPTH Online Workshop Announced Starting in December, two new online workshops. First, Plotting with Depth is now on the schedule. You must have taken the basic Depth workshop to take Plotting with Depth. Plotting with Depth is about the structure of all the openings throughout your novel, when to go deep with an opening, when to stay light, and how to hold a reader through a book by using Depth. One major area in this workshop is how chapter and scene openings differ from genre to genre. Critical to know how to hold your reader in your book. The Depth Online Workshop teaches how to get a reader down into your…